Heroes, Villains and Victims of 2020

 Julie Kelly:

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Heroes

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis: After barely beating Andrew Gillum in 2018, DeSantis landed near the top of the Left’s hit list and has stayed there ever since. DeSantis resisted calls in the spring to shut down Florida amid a vicious smear campaign by the news media, which continue to vilify him to this day.

DeSantis navigated a summer surge that also hit other parts of the Sun Belt without coming close to the fatality rates endured in states such as New York and New Jersey, which were hailed as models by the Left. In September, DeSantis lifted all restrictions on bars and restaurants and opened up nursing homes for family visits, later promising never to shut down again. People and businesses are flocking to the Sunshine State from failed blue states. DeSantis, 42, now is viewed as a 2024 Republican presidential contender.

Dr. Scott Atlas: A neuroradiologist and Hoover Institution fellow, Atlas joined President Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force in August, six months too late. An early proponent of a more realistic approach to COVID-19, Atlas has been torched by the press, Democrats, public health “experts,” his Stanford colleagues, and even some in the White House.

But his views about herd immunity, mask use, and the human toll of lockdowns are scientifically sound. The people who push lockdowns, Atlas told me this year, “have blood on their hands.” Sad, but true: History will be much kinder to Atlas than to the current tyrants in the media and “expert” class.

Alex Berenson, Team Reality: Only a very small handful of journalists and commentators objected in March to shutdown orders to “flatten the curve.” Former New York Times reporter and author Alex Berenson led the pack this year, challenging the groupthink of his peers and focusing on data as opposed to fear. Amazon briefly banned the sale of his ebook critical of lockdowns. Others on Team Reality include Jordan Schachtel, Justin Hart, Aaron Ginn, Phil Kerpen, Daniel Horowitz, Steve Deace, Jesse Kelly, Tracy Beanz, and many others behind the scenes studying the actual science.

The New York Post: In October, after the Post published shocking information discovered on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the paper faced an onslaught of criticism. Articles detailing the trove, which confirmed Biden’s overseas rackets and his father’s involvement, were banned both by social media and traditional news outlets. Twitter locked the Post’s account for two weeks ahead of Election Day.

Former intelligence officials, including John Brennan and James Clapper, signed a letter claiming the laptop materials were part of a “Russian disinformation campaign.” The paper has since been vindicated; news reports published after the election confirm Hunter Biden is under federal criminal investigation.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton: Rank-and-file Republican are rightly furious at top party officials for failing to confront egregious—and likely election-altering—voter fraud in key states. Trump’s legal team was all over the place, clearly unprepared for the necessary court challenges. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a solid lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court on December 7, later joined by several other state attorneys general and more than 100 Republican congressmen, outlining election illegalities in four swing states. Paxton’s filing should have been prepared by Team Trump and the Republican National Committee right after the election. The high court, to its lasting shame, refused to consider the case.

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The Villains

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo: Of the many solid candidates for “Villain of the Year” occupying executive mansions on both sides of the aisle, Cuomo beats them all. Cuomo did nothing to prepare his state for COVID-19, admitting in March that New York had no plan. New York City was besieged early on and acted as a “super spreader” for the rest of the country. His Health Department issued deadly guidance in late March to readmit COVID patients to nursing homes.

New York has the second-highest fatality rate, nearly double Florida’s. Yet despite his incompetence, Cuomo has been praised by the news media and pundit class. He wrote a book patting himself on the back for his handling of the crisis and won an Emmy for his self-serving press conferences. Shortly after, Cuomo began locking down parts of New York again as cases spiked. Nothing beats Big Apple arrogance.

Dr. Anthony Fauci: Too much ground to cover here, but suffice it to say Fauci is almost single-handedly responsible for the catastrophe we now face as a country. As I argued in April, the president should have sidelined Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx as soon as they validated dubious models forecasting widespread death and doom. Trump, unfortunately, kept him on and Fauci quickly achieved rock star status; the aging bureaucrat was viewed as the “scientific” antidote to Trump despite reversing himself on everything including COVID’s fatality rate, face coverings, school closings, and most recently, herd immunity.

Nearly everyone has bought into Fauci’s messiah complex. He graced the cover of InStyle magazine, an honor never extended to First Lady Melania Trump, and was on Time’s list for Person of the Year. But no one did more damage to the economy, the country’s psyche, or our children’s future, than Anthony Fauci in 2020.

Public health “experts”: A highly-partisan scientific community exploited the coronavirus crisis to score political points against Donald Trump. Only the “experts” were permitted to opine on how to handle the virus; paycheck-safe academics and healthcare providers backed economic shutdowns without remorse. Colleagues who dared to suggest anything other than the anti-Trump company line faced harsh condemnation.

The Centers for Disease Control published unscientific “guidance,” often based on studies from China, promoting outlandish advice such as to avoid singing during the holidays. Its recommendations were used to promote mail-in voting in 2020, which helped Joe Biden win the White House.

Mass gatherings, the experts insisted, must be forbidden. That unquestionable advice, however, quickly changed during the George Floyd riots; social justice prevailed over social distancing. Hard to think of a group that burned its credibility more this year than our haughty credentialed class.

COVID-19 modelers: Dr. Neil Ferguson at Imperial College London ignited global hysteria with his March 16 model predicting 2.2 million Americans would die of the virus by the end of the year. Ferguson introduced the world to the pseudoscientific “social distancing” theory that has failed. Ferguson quickly walked back his projections after much criticism; he then was caught violating his own home isolation order when he visited his married lover in May. Computer experts shredded his buggy code, but the damage was done.

Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, acted as Ferguson’s American doppelgänger. In late March, Murray churned out similar models that warned the United States would run out of ICUs and ventilators. Fauci and Birx presented both models to President Trump in late March, convincing him to shut down the national economy for another month. None of their dire predictions came true but the world is saddled with ineffective, destructive “social distancing” dogma for the foreseeable future.

Big Tech: Silicon Valley shaped America’s discourse in 2020, and not for the better. Doctors who questioned COVID-19 “mitigation” measures or promoted hydroxychloroquine were banned; ditto for posts criticizing the efficacy of face masks.

Big Tech’s meddling in the 2020 presidential election resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars—at least—in unlawful in-kind contributions to Joe Biden and the Democrats. Social media companies and internet search engines collaborated to suppress criticism about absentee voting; dozens of the president’s tweets before the election were flagged, allegedly for containing “disputed” information, an absolutely laughable policy considering the same platforms allowed users to spread lies about Russian collusion, the Covington Catholic High School kids, and Brett Kavanaugh, just to name a few recent notorious incidents.

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There is much more.

Obviously, many of the victims were the elderly with preexisting conditions.  Others include the children who have been kept out of school needlessly.